You will consume 7 GB of mobile data a month by 2021: Report

NEW DELHI: The total number of mobile subscriptions in India is expected to reach approximately 1.37 billion by 2021, according to the latest report by Ericsson. The report also says that monthly data traffic per active smartphone is expected to increase five times, from 1.4 GB per month in 2015 to 7 GB per month by 2021.

The report notes that mobile broadband usage is set to dramatically increase, with smartphone subscriptions and total mobile traffic expected to increase four-fold and fifteen-fold respectively from 2015 to 2021 – reaching 810 million smartphone subscriptions and mobile traffic of 4.5 Exabytes per month.

The GSM/EDGE subscriber base is expected to grow until 2016 and decline thereafter, due to operator initiatives to migrate 2G subscribers to 3G, decreasing handset prices and bundling of data with devices.

WCDMA/HSPA and LTE networks are expected to gain momentum, and the subscriptions will together account for 65% of Indian subscriptions by 2021.

Total smartphone traffic is growing seventeen-fold to 4.2 Exabytes per month by 2021. Data traffic for other devices is also growing steadily and is expected to increase four-fold, between 2015 and 2021 to around 170 Petabytes per month.


“Over 70% of smartphone users are satisfied with the network performance at home while doing instant messaging, web browsing or social networking using mobile internet. Over 60% of smartphone users are satisfied with the network performance at home while streaming videos using mobile internet. However, only 50% are satisfied with network performance for streaming videos on a smartphone while commuting,” said Paolo Colella, region head for Ericsson in India.

In India, streaming music and watching videos are the most popular forms of entertainment on smartphones. Around 50% of smartphone users stream music on mobile apps every week, and many internet users watch short online video clips on a weekly basis, the report added.